I don’t want to take anything away from the Ukrainians, who have basically been a banner case of military transformation, but it also helps that the Russians are really, really bad at the whole “war that involves more than bombing hospitals” thing.
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Although I largely agree, I have three points to make about Laughing Wolf’s phrasing here. 1) Either Putin has rebuked the Russian handler of the first transgender US army officer traitor and returned the information, or I think the sincerity of his opposition to weird wokeness in the west should be questioned. (But I predict the western activists accusing the unwoke of being his stooges won’t question it, so it may have some effect.) 2) Putin’s not such a genius for coming up with this idea. The Clinton campaign floated this story in 2016, and the idea that Trump is a Russian asset and his followers either traitors or dupes was insolently rerun by the Times and others this February and laughably fallen for by this pundit and others in March. So I think a degree of it was happening anyway and would have continued to happen. Putin’s remarks may not add much fresh fuel to that already-burning bonfire on the ice. 3) However, seeing what the usual suspects pretend Trump meant by Vlad’s “genius move” (and how many of the usual dupes swallowed it or pretended to) maybe Laughing Wolf should be more cautious about saying things like “a touch of brilliance that reflects the old Vladimir … Yet more Gramscian damage to the West.”, lest he suffer some ‘Gramscian’ damage himself. 🙂 Also from Laughing Wolf:
Nice to know we’re appreciated. October 1st, 2022 | 18 comments
 “The point is that Britain was in an economic mess before Ms. Truss took office, and there is no alternative universe in which policies that have failed for 12 years suddenly would start working on the cusp of a global downturn. The choice is the gamble of a major policy overhaul, or the certainty of steeper decline. So yes, U.S. Republicans, do take note of Ms. Truss’s travails in Britain. The Tories squandered their reputation for competent, free-market economic management. They now find that it’s hard to win back at precisely the moment they and the country need it most.” The Wall Street Journal (I seem to be quoting it a lot these days), giving its transatlantic take on the past 12 years of Conservative fecklessness and some occasional sensible moves. Its verdict on the Bank of England is particularly damning:
On the bright side, at least we hopefully won’t hear much more about Modern Monetary Theory. Addendum: I have ordered Edward Chancellor’s book, The Price of Time, and will review it when I get my copy. It is getting good reviews. We shall see! Sterling is recovering a bit against the dollar. I wonder if some hedge fund types that have shorted the pound have been squeezed out. Update: In response to bad polls and the fact that many Tory MPs are more or less social democrats with a blue label, the Chancellor has reversed his removal of the 45% top tax rate. So, combined with national insurance and other taxes, top earners face a marginal rate around 60 per cent, which is high even by European standards. Needless to say, this is unlikely to help the party retain power unless there is a dramatic improvement in the economy. And even if there is, the “it’s time for a change” will be hard to resist. Labour can get rid of its nuttier members and get into power. September 30th, 2022 | 21 comments
“Labour surges to 33-point lead over Tories”, reports the Times.
Liz Truss now faces a choice. She can pull back. This might regain her a percentage point or two. She would then be 31 points behind instead of 33. Her place in history would be secure: as an answer to a difficult pub quiz question about who was Prime Minister between Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer. Or she can push onwards. She might still fail, but more gloriously. And if she succeeds, she gets to sit alongside Margaret Thatcher in the Told You So Hall of Fame. Even if, as seems likely, she loses the next election but hands Sir Keir an economy in significantly better shape, she will be remembered as someone who put country before party. September 29th, 2022 | 25 comments
We have about the highest level of taxation we have had in the UK since the 1970s. In the 2021-2022 tax year tax receipts were 30.3% of GDP. In 2009-2010 they were 25% of GDP which was the lowest level in the last 20 years and occurred under a Labour government. The recently proposed tax changes are: cancel an increase in corporation tax; reverse a recent (unpopular with the left) 1.25% increase in national insurance contributions; cut basic rate of income tax by 1%; change stamp duty nil band from 125,000 to 250,000 (the average house price is 281,000); remove the 45% additional rate of income tax (paid by 629,000 people earning more than £150,000, to the tune of about £1.5bn (thanks to KJP for the correction)). Such changes are welcome to me, but do not appear to be particularly radical. And yet everyone, from the IMF to forex traders to buyers of government bonds to Torygraph columnists, not to mention literally everyone on Twitter, is completely freaking out about it. Most commentators seem to be aghast at the very concept of tax cuts. Few commentators are talking about spending. Are these tax cuts really so big and costly, or is it that nobody believes that a smaller state can lead to economic growth, instead believing that government tax and spending is a zero sum game, and that anything other than a steady increase in tax and spending is terrifying? September 28th, 2022 | 28 comments
“The unemployment rate was 3.5% in July, the same as in February 2020, but the U.S. has three million fewer workers. Where did everyone go? This in an economy with 11.2 million job openings. It’s mostly men 25 to 54 who haven’t come back to work. Now a McKinsey study suggests that 40% of workers are thinking of quitting their jobs. Does anyone want to work anymore?” – Andy Kessler, Wall Street Journal ($). September 27th, 2022 | 16 comments
On February 7th, Joe Biden said, “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Today the Guardian reports: “Fears of sabotage as gas pours into Baltic from Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines” Was it sabotage? If so, who did it and was it a good thing to do? September 27th, 2022 | 70 comments
The alternative to the cornering and humiliation of Russia would be for the United States and its allies to halt or reduce their aid to Ukraine and impose a stalemate. But that would mean delivering a victory to Russia, because it would still hold more Ukrainian territory than it did in 2014 and would have gone unpunished for pervasive war crimes, including mass murder. In three or four years, a rearmed Russia, thirsting for revenge for the losses and defeats it has suffered, would do the same thing again, and against a dispirited Ukraine. If that were to happen, it would be an utter disaster for American policy and Western security. Such an imposed stalemate would be profoundly immoral, but equally to the point, it would be profoundly stupid. So this is indeed a dangerous moment, because Putin will inevitably find himself humiliated and cornered and may very well look for a way to lash out. But as General James Wolfe said before storming the heights of Quebec in 1759, war is an option of difficulties. The error lies in thinking that one can titrate the application of violence to achieve exquisitely precise results. To the extent that the West continues to attempt to do so, it will merely ensure more mass graves like those of Bucha and Izyum, and more soldiers lying limbless or in the burn wards of Ukrainian military hospitals. So now, as ever, Churchill’s observation that courage is the virtue that makes all others possible holds, particularly for the leaders of the embattled West. Zelensky could not put it better himself. September 26th, 2022 | 40 comments
My Grandmother used to have a word. It began with “F” but it’s not that “F” word or even the slightly less bad Irish “F” word as popularised by Father Ted. It’s another “F” word but you will search your dictionary in vain to find it. It’s not in mine. In fact, I am far from sure it has ever been written down. If it were written down it would be something like “footer” with the “foo” pronounced like the “Foo” in Foo Fighters not the “foo” in foot. Well, I say that but that’s only about as close as an Englishmen can get. Monaghan pronunciation is not something that I would advise the typical Englishmen, Scotsman or, indeed, Irishman to attempt. Worse still for any cultural appropriators out there, “footer” almost never came without being preceded with another word. The word means “old” but it is pronounced like “aisle” but we can’t use “aisle” because people in Monaghan take their religion seriously. “Isle” also looks silly so I am going to go for “ail”. Anyway, it turned out that a lot of acquaintances of my grandmother turned out to be “ail footers”. In fact, at times it seemed – if my grandmother was anything to go by – that 90% of the population of Monaghan could be so categorized. However, it turns out that “footer” is not just a noun but a verb. I say that but I’ve only heard that from the lips of one person – not my grandmother – a resident of Armagh who couldn’t pronounce the word but did at least understand it. So, it’s not in common use. But I can’t think of a better word in light of the mini-Budget announced on Friday. Whatever Liz Truss may be or may do she is not a “footer” and she is not “footering about”. For Liz Truss to not be a “footer” is an achievement in itself. The last 12 years of Conservative or mainly Conservative rule has been government of Footers, by Footers, for Footers. Liz Truss herself has spent the last ten years as a Cabinet minister. That means 10 years defending policy most of which she must have thought was nonsense. How do you do that without the steady erosion of your sense of right and wrong? How do you do that without losing all sense of urgency? Anyway, she has and the speed at which non-footerish announcements on taxes, regulations, energy and Ukraine are coming out of government is astonishing. I have been burnt so many times by politicians that I have become reluctant to give them my whole-hearted support. I am not yet ready to do that in the case of Liz Truss but this is an extremely promising start.  There is little about Liz Truss’s appearance or demeanour to suggest (to me at least) a Thatcher-like determination. From Heaver News. September 25th, 2022 | 26 comments
I know enough gay people – progs, conservatives, libertarians even – to know that most of them wanted to be accepted and unashamed and then ignored (as if they were just . . . normal!) and are now looking on in horror as “their” movement gets co-opted and taken over by people with huge latex breasts with protruding nipples claiming the right to teach in high schools while dressed that way. That’s not what they wanted, and we made it possible by forcing them to construct a movement when we wouldn’t accept them living quietly amongst us. It was the existence of that ready-built movement that the latex breast people could take over that made all of this fun possible. I can almost feel Andrew Sullivan’s pain when he says we should remove the “G” and maybe the “L” from the new LGBT movement. – Bobby B September 24th, 2022 | 34 comments
Here is a confession: I wrote most of this post on January 17th, the day I read the Times article that I quote. Then something distracted me and I put it aside to finish later. It is now “later”, as in “250 days later”, and, having been reminded of the onrushing apocalypse by the reaction to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, I have finished it up and present it to you now. * How’s your science fiction novel getting along? Oh. Sorry. Same here, I must admit. Maybe we would be doing better if the government were paying us to write the stuff? “Met Office forecasts a Britain of militia war, bartering and child labour”, the Times reports:
The “Met Office” is the Meteorological Office, the UK’s national weather forecasting service.
There are a few more pessimistic scenarios, including one in which “a rich elite has privatised the NHS and introduced military conscription to deal with criminality and social unrest” (I could go with the first half of that) and then, shining softly in the darkness like your one permitted eco-friendly lightbulb, there’s the one where…
They couldn’t resist.
Decades ago the U.S. Center for Disease Control got bored of doing its day job and decided to spend its time controlling guns instead. In vain did the Republicans add a rider to the 1996 omnibus spending bill telling ’em to stick to diseases; Obama repealed it. Turned out the CDC might indeed have been better employed doing what it said on the tin. I hate to dash the dreams of fellow aspiring science fiction writers, but I think the same advice might apply to the Meteorological Office. September 24th, 2022 | 12 comments
Heaven forbid trying increase gas supplies in a time of gas shortage. Amazing how many greens seem to have a convergence of interests with nice Mr. Putin. Funny that. – Perry de Havilland on the opposition to fracking in UK from the usual suspects. September 23rd, 2022 | 38 comments
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